While TikTok has restored services to US users, the app stores are a different story as it is still unavailable for download and updates.
When the US Supreme court ruled that mass government censorship is not a violation of free speech, and in the process, banned TikTok, the platform itself shuttered services to US users. The free speech hating mainstream media hailed it as a massive victory. In fact, those same media outlets, working with the government, then immediately started pushing to censor other platforms out of existence as well – most notably, RedNote. As I’ve already noted, it’s a purely stupid idea because it initiates a never ending game of whack-a-mole where you pour efforts to censor one platform only to have 3 or 4 pop up afterwards anyway. It repeats the mistakes of what we saw in the file-sharing debates of old.
The problem is that there are a lot of really bad implications of such a move. Over top of the complete evisceration of the right to freedom of expression in the US, there is also the economic and political ramifications. Indeed, TikTok has generated hundreds of thousands of jobs and produced tens of billions in economic activity. All of that legally got wiped out overnight. What’s more, TikTok has been enjoyed by an estimated 170 million American’s and, as such, a huge chunk of the US population aren’t exactly going to be pleased that something they have enjoyed for so long is being forcibly ripped out of their hands.
All of this could very easily partly explain why both former president Biden and current president Trump have flip-flopped on the issue. Both have long pushed for it to be banned with Trump failing miserably to do so in his first term and Biden personally signing off on the law that would see the platform get censored. In response, Biden, on the way out, said that he doesn’t plan on enforcing the law. Trump, for his part, said that he would sign an executive order giving the platform more time and potentially altering the terms to stick around by allowing 50% ownership instead. It’s a pretty big sign of why this whole sorry affair was a huge mistake in the first place and suggests that these calls to ban the platform were meant to be hot air and little else, but ended up being a case of the dog catching the car and is now being forced to deal with the consequences of this shortsightedness.
So, when Trump said that he would sign an executive order, extending the deadline, it seemed that TikTok was open to the idea as they have restored services for American users. That’s good news, but this only means that TikTok is not outright refusing users from the US.
A huge component to all of this is the TikTok app itself. For those who access this platform via the app, you generally need to use the built-in app store. For Apple users, it’s the Apple app store. For Android users, they are probably using the Google app store. For American’s, downloading and installing the app through those official stores is, well, not possible. This is problematic because it makes it harder for users to continue to use the platform through their phones. At least for Android users, it’s possible to sideload the app by simply installing it through less “authorized” (for a lack of a better term) means, but that also has its own set of security risks.
A major problem here is that even if you do have the app installed on your phone, it won’t be getting necessary security updates. That puts the privacy and security of users at risk as malware developers try and find zero day exploits for the app in question.
So, why can’t the app stores restore the app for American users? Well, it’s legally problematic according to TechDirt:
But in the wake of TikTok v. Garland, here we are, with TikTok still basically shut down — or at least without the partners it needs to work properly. Or protect its users, because as long as it’s not in the app stores users cannot get software updates, thus leaving every phone with it installed extremely vulnerable to unpatched zero day exploits. Which, of course, is yet another reason the “Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” was unconstitutionally bad policy that never should have been allowed by anyone (as well as very poorly named).
But the Executive Order Trump just issued to forestall the law’s enforcement doesn’t solve the problem. There is still a law on the books that sanctions TikTok, as well as anyone who helps TikTok provide its services. Trump has no authority to set aside the law. Nor does he have the authority to delay its enforcement – the law articulates a small avenue by which he could, but the criteria that would give him this power has not been met (it would have required TikTok to be much further along with divesting itself).
Instead the Executive Order creates new problems. Because here is Trump trying to claim an unprecedented amount of raw power to decide whether or not to enforce the law. But that lawlessness he’s demonstrating can offer no protection from law. It can offer no protection from anything. And Google and Apple and any of the other providers TikTok needs would be fools to pretend otherwise.
Just run the math: Trump wants these companies to be in his debt. From at least some, like Google, he’s already extracted at least a million dollars in tithes “for his inauguration.” But there’s nothing to limit him from continuing to extract millions more. Meanwhile, if any of these companies serve TikTok they will be staring down a sanction of potentially more than 500 billion dollars (the penalty, especially for the app stores, is $5000 per TikTok user, and even for the other providers it’s still $500 per user). So if the way to avoid that penalty is to depend on Trump’s arbitrary benevolence, Trump could extract up to $499,999,999,999 from each of them, and that’s just to maybe avoid them getting in trouble for violating this law. Stay tuned for what other laws get put on the books next, especially now that the constitutional limits on them have been so relaxed.
At that point it would have long been more cost effective to just help elect Democrats and pay taxes like a normal company hoping to profit from Americans’ business.
Oof indeed.
For what it’s worth, though, I searched for these apps from my Canadian vantage point on a desktop PC and see that the app appears to be available to Canadian’s at least. For instance, the Google Play store entry shows this for me:
The Apple app store, for me, shows the same thing:
I don’t know if that means much, necessarily, but that’s what I’m seeing. This does make sense because this is, after all, an American law affecting the availability of an app to American users. I don’t see why the app can’t be made available to, in this case, Canadian’s at least. Is there a way to spoof an IP address of another country to download an updated app? Probably. Still, it’s interesting food for thought at least.
Still, the banning of the app was stupid from the get go. There are numerous ways it can likely be circumvented for those who are truly into getting around government censorship. Everything about this debacle has become one giant mess for all involved. You could spend months talking about the many different ways this event is terrible. As we noted above, it’s problematic from, at minimum, a security standpoint.
